Electrical energy meters now perform tasks in addition to simple energy metering. One of the additional tasks is to verify or detect an electric service or a component of the electric service, such as a service type, a nominal service voltage and/or a phase rotation. Currently, electric service detection is typically performed, in part, by calculating one or more phase angles between applied phasor voltages.
The current systems and methods used for service detection may require complex calculations. For example, the calculations typically require using a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) type of calculation, where the signal in question is multiplied by a reference signal, and then multiplied by the reference signal delayed by 90 degrees. The reference signal may be an actual line to neutral voltage itself, and/or in other cases may be an ideal signal based on the reference signal. In either case, two resultant values are calculated and from those two values, an angle or angles may be calculated. The current systems and methods may also expend significant software, hardware and/or time resources to perform the calculations associated with determining the phase angle, and further, to determine service components from the applied voltage phasors and phase angles. Examples of current systems and methods to determine an electric service may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,094,622 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY DETERMINING THE ELECTRICAL ENERGY SERVICE TYPE TO WHICH AN ENERGY METER IS CONNECTED, U.S. Pat. No. 6,112,158 entitled SERVICE TYPE RECOGNITION IN ELECTRICAL UTILITY METER and U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,554 entitled ELECTRONIC METERING DEVICE INCLUDING AUTOMATIC SERVICE SENSING.
It would be desirable to be able to identify alternate ways to determine an electric service, or a component of the electric service, associated with an electrical energy meter connection without directly calculating a phase angle.